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Alex Ostberg is batting 1.000 in two trips to the Connecticut Junior Olympic cross-country championships. The 13-year-old
Darien runner
, competing for the
Wilton Running Club
, won his second state title and set another age group record in winning
Sunday's race
in Litchfield.

Ostberg won the 4-kilometer (nearly 2.5-mile) Youth Boys race in 13:46, outrunning runner-up Michael Stoker by 33 seconds. He broke the course record of 13:54 held by Connor Rog. Ostberg set the course record in winning the Midget Boys division last year, which was his first in competitive running.

"Breaking the course record was unbelievable,'' said Ostberg, who won the Connecticut Middle School championship the previous week. "I wasn't expecting that."

Alex approached the race with some trepidation because he had moved up in age classification and was competing against some high school freshman. Ostberg controlled the race of the start, blazing through a 5:05 first mile  his fastest ever  and pushing up a sizable hill in the second mile. "The hill set my pace back a little bit, but I think being able to push through it helped me out a lot,'' Alex said. "I'm really proud of myself. Having my name on the record sheet twice is amazing."

Wilton Club teammate Spencer Brown took fourth, and Clint Corso was 13th. They will compete in Sunday's regional meet in Burrillville, R.I. The top 25 runners advance to the national meet in Hoover, Ala., on Dec. 11.

"From what I've seen my time looks pretty good, but you can never tell,'' Alex said. "There's a lot of fast kids just like last year, and I'll be facing some better high school students. I hope all three of us qualify for the national race. I think we all have a good chance."